Ivan Fischer Returning to Mostly Mozart Festival With Some New Tricks

Along with meticulous musical preparation, the inventive conductor Ivan Fischer likes to mix up orchestra seatings and strew singers amid the instrumentalists. He polls audiences for their choice of encore. At the Mostly Mozart Festival two years ago Mr. Fischer used a chorus to create human tableaus sets for a concert version of “Don Giovanni.”

He will be at it again at this summer’s festival, conducting his Budapest Festival Orchestra in a production of “The Marriage of Figaro,” Mostly Mozart officials said on Tuesday in announcing the 2013 program at Lincoln Center. Mr. Fischer is also listed as director of the production, which had its debut in Budapest in February.

“Costumes will float in from above the stage action, as actors slide them on and off as needed for each scene,” according to press materials. Mr. Fischer was quoted as saying, “Because dresses will have the central focus, the performances will start as a concert and then, eventually, be dressed up as an opera.”

Mostly Mozart also said the International Contemporary Ensemble would return with 10 concerts to include 10 first performances of pieces by New York composers; there will be concerts drawing a connection between Beethoven and Mozart; the festival debuts of the conductors Gianandrea Noseda and David Afkham; and an all-Handel program by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The festival runs from July 27 to Aug. 24.